Watson's Case (4 page)

The box was very heavy, but he did his best to hold it securely and keep his face from screwing up. He stepped onto the soil, left a print, stepped off, and set the box down.

“Ahhh! Just as I suspected!” Miss Hertz beckoned for everyone to gather around and look at Rollie's foot print. “Notice how deep the print is—a clear indication he was bearing weight. What did I tell you, eh? Tattle-tales!”

At the end of the hour, the students nearly raced out of class. They pushed down the hall to Room F, but were taken aback to find the door locked.

“Why's it locked?” Cecily wondered.

“Maybe she's out,” Tibby suggested.

“But we have class,” Rollie said. “Wait, shh!”

They pressed their ears to the door and listened. For a moment they heard a flute warble clearly. Then they heard
clip-clop, clip-clop
and stepped back as the door flew open. Gwendolyn A. Gram held a long silver flute.

“Welcome to class!” she tweeted. “Do come in.” She stepped aside to admit them.

Oohs and ahhs were heard as the children entered their classroom that was anything but recognizable. Their new teacher had wasted no time in giving the once-sterile room a makeover. Dusty-rose wallpaper colored the walls. Desks had been shifted and grouped. On one side of the room two armchairs and an end table bordered a plush rug. A tall lamp glowed on the sitting area, while a smaller lamp glowed on the teacher's large oak desk. Autumn garlands framed the blackboard and the doorway. The air was rich with that now-familiar scent.

When they were seated, Gwendolyn skipped to the front of the classroom, smoothed her plum-colored dress, and smiled.

“Every Monday, we will study the current newspapers. Dearest Holmes had a ritual of reading every major newspaper every morning to stay current with British affairs. This always helped him in his cases. Staying informed of current affairs is good etiquette. You'll never be without something to say in cultured conversations, especially at dinner parties. We will study the
Times, Gazette,
and the
Daily Telegraph,
all newspapers Holmes read. You will read your page and write a paragraph summarizing the news. Get to work, children!” She clapped her hands twice, and flitted to her desk.

The students watched her a few moments, and dragged their eyes away to their newspaper pages on their desks. They detected a soft humming from Gwendolyn as she tidied up.

Rollie read a few sentences from the
Gazette
, but found his eyes wandering back to the teacher. He was not too excited about all the frou-frou, and thought that her personality was a bit over the top, so much that he found her a little fake. She reminded him of someone, he was certain.

He heard Cecily smother a giggle beside him, and glanced over at her.

“Look!” She pointed to some figures penciled next to the headline of a page from the
Daily Telegraph
. “The Dancing Men code we just learned about. I'll bet Ms. Yardsly and Miss Gram put this activity together. I love how all our detective studies tie into each other!”

Rollie was about to comment when Miss Gram walked around the classroom, her high-heels
clip-clopping
on the hardwood floor.

Rollie swallowed.
That
'
s
who she reminded him of: Herr Zilch's secretary! Rollie studied her closely, looking for any signs of her wearing a disguise. He had a vague memory of the secretary's appearance, and knew for sure she was not platinum blond. He looked at her hands and shoes, for Mr. Chad always said those were dead giveaways to a poor disguise. But they gave away nothing.

No, it couldn't be her
, he thought. Then he remembered Professor Enches, and how he had been secretly working with Zilch to infiltrate the Academy. It was not too far-fetched to suppose Zilch had sent his secretary to go undercover at the Academy, too.

Miss Gram noticed Rollie staring at her, and waved him over to her desk.

Rollie blushed. He quietly stood and padded up to the desk.

“Do you have a question, little boy?” Miss Gram asked, smiling sweetly.

Rollie hated that she had just called him that, but he held his tongue and made up a question. “How long should the paragraph be?”

“At least five sentences—a respectable length.”

“Thank you, Miss Gram.”

“Next time, please raise your hand.” She winked and straightened a floral blotter.

Rollie fumed inside, hating every patronizing word she had said to him. He returned to his desk.

Miss Gram announced in her sing-song way, “Please form a queue at my desk and hand me your paragraphs and newspaper pages. You may take one piece of candy from my jar when you do. Spit-spot!”

Rollie squeezed into line. When he was two students away from her, he happened to glance into the wastebasket next to Miss Gram's desk. On top of other trash lay a sheet of paper with the initials MUS written at the top. He looked up at Miss Gram, her face pretty and flawless even up close. Had she thrown the letter away? Did it belong to her? Was she really the secretary after all? He had to get that letter.

He moved up in line, just one student away from Miss Gram. Quickly, he stooped, snatched, and stood before the other student had even passed his paragraph. Rollie stuffed the letter into his pocket and stepped up. He extended his paragraph and newspaper to Miss Gram. She accepted it with her dainty pink-polished fingers. Rollie picked out a blue candy from the jar and moved out of line. He had swiped a similar letter before and been caught. This time he had gotten away with it. A good thing, since this potentially dangerous letter needed to go straight to the headmaster.

The Fir
st Creepy Thing

No matter the reason, Rollie always relished visiting the headmaster's office since it was the original 221b, the official residence of Sherlock Holmes. Almost everything in the flat from the chemistry set in the corner to the bullet holes riddled in the mantel was original property of the great detective and Dr. Watson. The only addition that belonged to Headmaster Yardsly was the clutter of mail, papers, and notebooks atop the desk he sat behind.

“Come in, come in.” Yardsly beckoned with his hand.

Rollie crossed the cozy room and sat in a folding chair before the burdened desk.

“SO!”

Rollie started.

“What do you need from me? It must be important if you're willing to miss part of your lunch recess.”

“I think it is, sir. I found this in Miss Gram's wastebasket.” Rollie smoothed the letter and handed it over.

Raising his straggly eyebrows, Yardsly scanned it. “MUS! This is important. It's in code, but luckily I remember it from the other letters we decoded. Grant me a few minutes to decode it.” He searched among the clutter for something to write on. He found a paper napkin.

As Yardsly deciphered the letter, Rollie analyzed the situation. If the letter was to Miss Gram, how could she be so careless as to throw it away in plain sight? If the letter was not to Miss Gram, why had she thrown it away instead of turning it in? Didn't she know about MUS and its vendetta against the Academy? Why had she—

“AH-HA!”

Rollie jolted back from his reverie.

“I've got the message. Let me first say you did the right thing bringing me this letter. It contains a most grave secret.” Yardsly glanced around the room as if checking for anybody who might be hiding and eavesdropping, perhaps behind the drapes. Of course there was no one, but this gesture impressed upon Rollie the importance of what Yardsly had to share.

“The letter reads, ‘Our little mole will adapt well. The less contact with our spy the better, as we don't want to compromise our mole's cover with the students.” He blinked at Rollie.

Rollie blinked back.

“WELL?”

Rollie felt almost too shocked to react.
Almost
—he flinched. “So that means—”

“Ichabod Enches wasn't the only undercover accomplice in the Academy,” Yardsly finished with a tone of dread. “This poses a problem.”

To say the least! Every question that popped into Rollie's mind bred more questions until his brain fluttered with questions more than his middle fluttered with anxiety.

“Is this letter for Miss Gram?” he asked.

Yardsly, who was in the middle of sipping his water, choked. “Of course not! It's to Professor Enches. Gwendolyn must have cleaned out Enches' desk and thrown away any remnants.”

Rollie was about to ask the reason Miss Gram had not turned the letter in, but Yardsly continued.

“We register this information one step at a time.” With a flourish from behind his desk, Yardsly whipped out his 5 Ws poster he used as a visual aid when addressing those questions. He used a pencil as a pointer.

“WHO! This
mole
is working for Herr Zilch, the archenemy of our Academy and everything we stand for. Is it a teacher again? I will conduct an even more thorough investigation of each staff member. I wonder if the mole is a student because of the line
we don't want to compromise our mole's cover with the students
. Also the mole is described as
little
.”

Rollie felt a creepy flutter like chills in his middle. It made him queasy to think a student could be working for their enemy.

“Perhaps we could flush out the mole easily enough if he's only a youngster. But we don't want to scare off the mole too soon. He could retreat to Herr Zilch before we uncovered the mole's identity. We could use the mole to track down Herr Zilch.”

“That makes sense, sir.”

“WHAT! Find the mole,” the headmaster said simply. “WHEN! There's no knowing how long this mole has been in place or if he or she has yet to be in place. WHERE! This mole could be in our school at this moment. WHY! This mole is working to betray information to Herr Zilch. What information exactly? Unsure. I'll enlist two extra security guards to keep an eye on the Rearranging Library since that's what Enches was after. Have I overlooked anything?”

“Why did Miss Gram throw this letter away? Doesn't she know about MUS?”

Yardsly sighed. “She knows about MUS and Herr Zilch, but she doesn't know about Enches. Since a teacher turned out to be a spy before, I've been more guarded this time around.” He leaned over his desk and locked eyes with Rollie. “I haven't told the students anything. I think it's best if they remain innocent—for their protection and ours. You probably already guessed this is why I've mandated new rules.”

“Yes, Eliot has informed me of them.”

“I'm also going to let our maids and janitors go just until we get this leak under control. Will you help me find the mole, lad?”

Rollie swallowed. Inside his pocket he crinkled the note from Zilch, and thought about telling Yardsly about it. For whatever reason he didn't want to.

“I, uh, I don't know, sir,” stammered Rollie.

Yardsly raised his eyebrows again. “That was not the response I expected. I thought you'd be eager to help. You seemed committed to protecting the Academy and bringing down—”

“I am! It's just . . .” Rollie cleared his throat. “Never mind. I'll help you find the mole.” He hoped he had made the right choice.

“Not a word of this to anyone, Rollin. This is a top secret assignment, understand?”

“Can I tell Cecily?” Rollie asked, remembering the last time he had kept secrets from Cecily; their friendship had not taken it so well.

Yardsly held his gaze. “FINE. Keep your eyes and ears open. You've proven good at that. And keep any information to yourself except from me and Cecily. Can I trust you with this secret mission?”

“Yes, sir, you have my word.” Rollie shook hands with his headmaster and was about to leave the office.

“One last thing,” halted Yardsly. “I need to remind you to keep up on your IS work. You have a few missing assignments from last week. Remember, those subjects are just as important as your detective studies, understand?”

Rollie turned red and swallowed. “Yes, sir, sorry, sir. I'll get to work.”

After closing the door behind him, he paused in the hall. He felt stunned by the choice he had just made to find Zilch's mole, but he couldn't resist a chance to stop him. Maybe Zilch wouldn't even know about Rollie's involvement. Rollie couldn't risk the unknown mole finding out about it and leaking it back to Zilch. He wondered who the person might be.

A student or another teacher? Miss Gram was top of his list, despite Yardsly's vouch for her. He couldn't shake the idea that she could be Zilch's secretary in disguise.

“Rollie!”

He snapped back to the present as Cecily joined his side.

“Why were you in the office? Are you in trouble?”

“No, not exactly. You could say we're all in trouble.”

“What did we do?”

“Headmaster told me that—” He stopped as a group of girls passed them and headed upstairs. “Let's go to the library.”

“It's locked. Remember the new rule?”

Rollie sighed in frustration. He led her to the vacant end of the hall by the storage closet. He lowered his voice. “There's a mole at the school. We don't know who they are, but Headmaster wants us to keep our eyes and ears open.”

“Is it another teacher?”

Rollie shrugged. “It could be a teacher; it could be a student—”

“A student!”

“Shh! We don't know. Can you keep this secret?”

“Of course, Holmes. I'm your Watson.”

“Eyes and ears open.”

“Check.”

Rollie pulled out his pocket notepad and pencil stub he always carried in his back pocket for such an occasion. He jotted down a list of the teachers.

“There's also the maintenance crew,” Cecily muttered through his thoughts.

“Headmaster is letting them and the maids go until we solve this.”

“You can't suspect Miss Gram!” Cecily pointed to her name on Rollie's list. “She's new!”

Rollie's cheeks turned pink. “She's fair game. Why did she throw the letter away? If she noticed it was in code, she should have thought it
might
be important. She should have turned it in, especially since she knows about MUS. Maybe she's working with MUS and tried to cover it up by throwing the letter away. I better keep an eye on her. You like her too much.”

“It's better for me to watch her because I'm a lady.”

Rollie laughed. “Cecily, you're such a fake! You always say you're not a lady and that's why you can wear trousers.”

“Well, now I've decided I am. We better grab lunch. It's almost one.”

“Have it your way,” Rollie relented, following her down the hall. “I can call you Miss Cecily then.”

Cecily shrugged. “Fine by me . . . Roly-Poly.”

“I hate when you use that stupid nickname. It's not my nickname because my name is Rollie with a—”

“Short
o
, I know.” Cecily giggled. “Like jolly or dolly.”

“Hey!”

“Roly-Poly?” a voice repeated.

Rollie and Cecily spun around.

Rupert leaned against the headmaster's office door, his arms crossed over his pudgy middle.

“Roly-Poly,” Rupert repeated flatly. “I like it.”

“Rupert, I'd really appreciate it if you would keep that to yourself.”

Rupert kept smirking in an unpleasant manner. “I guess.”

Although not satisfied with this answer, Rollie turned and led Cecily away upstairs. Once out of Rupert's earshot, they both let out a sigh of relief.

“He's really sneaky!” Cecily exclaimed with a shudder. “Did you notice him there?”

Rollie thought a moment. “I'm pretty sure he was not there when we came down the hall. And he wasn't in headmaster's office when I was in there. He just popped out of nowhere.”

“He's very unpleasant.”

“Like my dad said, no one's that way without a reason.”

Curiosity gnawed at Rollie. What was the reason? It had to be something tragic. Maybe Rupert's parents got divorced; that could make lots of children uneasy. It made Cecily edgy when her parents fought a few months ago. Luckily, they stayed together. Or maybe someone close to Rupert had died.

Or maybe Rupert was just the way he was because he wanted to be—like a villain in a classic story such as
Robin Hood
or
Treasure Island
. Villains were bad because they wanted to be bad. It was just who they were in the story.

Villains?

“I think we have our next suspect,” Rollie whispered.

“Who? Rupert?” Cecily gasped. “You think Rupert could be the mole?”

Rollie did not answer. If a child worked for Herr Zilch by hiding and spying, he would be very disagreeable. He would have a natural hatred for everyone at Sherlock Academy; otherwise he would not be working for Herr Zilch. He would also not care about attending classes, or keeping school rules. Of everyone at the Academy they considered so far, Rupert seemed the most likely.

“Be careful,” Cecily warned. “He's your roommate.”

“But Rupert—”

“We don't have any evidence.”

“Then we'll look for evidence.”

They hurriedly gobbled down sandwiches on their way to Observation class.

“Pardon, pardon, pardon.”

Mr. Percy E. Notch usually started his class off with this sentiment. He always entered the classroom in such a bustle and hustle of papers and pencils and untied shoelaces. His frizzy gray hair stood up on end, his tie flapped over his shoulder, and his thick lenses clung desperately to his nose. He reached his unkempt desk and added to the muddle by dropping an armload of briefcase, papers, mug of pencils, and tea thermos atop it. He blinked through his heavy glasses, which made him look like an owl.

“Happy October, Happy Monday, and Happy after-lunch class. Is there anything I'm leaving out? A birthday? Or an anniversary?” He took a step closer to them. “No? Very well, at this time I would like to pass back your observation notes from last month.”

He consulted his worn leather briefcase and probed around inside. “I know I have all your papers somewhere here,” he muttered. He pulled out a pair of binoculars, a tin of sardines, a handkerchief, a composition book, and a wallet. “Oh! My pocketbook. Thank goodness! Now where are . . . Oh, here are your papers on my desk. They weren't in my briefcase at all!”

As he bumbled around and returned student papers, he blurted little comments on each one. “Mr. Notch,” he squeaked in a high voice to imitate a child. “You must be more organized.”